Thursday morning, as it is most mornings these days, the Ralston sports and events center is a positive hive of activity. The pealing reverberation of hammers being swung, the grind of drills being pressed into massive metal beams, the spark and sizzle of white hot welding fires, all join in the first and longest concert of just sound in the massive cauldron now at sharp angles over 72^nd and Q streets. On this day, 10 area high schoolers have made their way to the arena, part of the Omaha Public Schools Career Center’s program in construction, and in so doing, the arena today also becomes a classroom.

“When we have a chance to do something like this, we really like to take advantage of it,” said Mike Heser, who is the project manager on the arena and works for Omaha-based Boyd Jones Construction. “in general, we’re seeing a lack of good, skilled craftsmen, especially as the current ones get older and move out of the workforce. WE need some youth willing to take their places.”

The students, 10 seniors from the Career Center, will be touring the arena and hearing Heser talk about the specifications of the project. It’s part educational, part advertisement for the profession and an honor for Boyd Jones and Ralston. As Andrew Naikelis – construction instructor at the OPS Career Center – explained, the senior capstone day sees the graduation members of the construction program take detailed tours of major projects around the metro area. The decision to include Ralston’s arena this year, Naikelis said, was and easy one.

“This is one of the biggest and best,” he said. “With the capstone day, we want to give the students a chance to see what goes into the construction industry, to a specific project. Construction management is huge right now and it goes from everything swinging a hammer to managing a site. They can see all of that here.”

With ground broken on the project in late June of last year, the facility has been rising steadily out of the swamp that was once Lakeview Golf Course for nearly a full year. The unique challenges to building on such a high water table is one of the things Heser highlights as he regales the students with stories of what happens in heavy rains and how a combination of technology and good, old-fashioned water removal techniques are ensuring the venue stays dry and work hums right along.

“It’s a great project for people to see,” Heser said. “Just to see the magnitude of some of the things we’re doing here is exciting. It has that ‘Wow’ factor and the guys who are working on this building take an awful lot of pride in what they do.”

The sentiment is not lost on the high schoolers. Walking through the as-yet dirt floor of the arena – which in the next month or so will begin to take shape as a surface on which ice hockey can be played – the students are impressed with all that has gone up around it and the effort exerted by the thousands of hands that have helped raise, join and support the building’s infrastructure.

“It’s a huge building,” said Nicholas Lopez, a senior at Omaha Central High School. “It’s pretty amazing what people working together can do.”

And in a few months, when the Ralston arena is hosting the Omaha Lancers junior league hockey team, the University of Nebraska at Omaha men’s basketball team and the Omaha Beef Indoor Football League team, the students said they’ll remember seeing the facility under construction and recall the work going on.

“We’ll be able to say, ‘Hey, we were in there when it was all going on,’” Lopez said. “When all the work was being done and it was going up right around us.”

For the students, that’s the real main event at the arena and the fact that craftsmen of every stripe – steelworkers, welders, carpenters, to name a few – are involved gives them motivation to continue in the study of trade. When Heser alluded to the dwindling skilled workforce, the students took notice.

“I love working with my hands, I love building things,” Plunkett said. “I don’t see why there would be a drop, but it’s sad.

Daniel Arens, a senior at Roncalli Catholic High School, said much the same thing, adding that he hoped his generation might be able to reverse the trend.

“It’s depressing,” he said. “There should be more craftsmen coming into the workforce because it’s a great job to get into.”

As Heser said, the drop-off in craftsmen has been partially attributable to the downshift in the economy. But there’s still also been more demand among the younger people entering the workforce for jobs where handiwork isn’t part of the job requirements.

“A lot of people just aren’t interested in hands-on kind of trades,” he said. “But if we get a big upswing in the economy, I think students like these guys could be the beneficiaries because there will be companies scrambling to man a lot of those skilled positions in the industry.”

Or, “woman,” as the case may be. Nicole Podkovich, another senior at Central, was the lone female in the Career Center contingent and said when it comes to construction; she said she feels most people don’t see blue or pink – just the green and, well, the slate gray of well-crafted walls.

“I find it a very interesting profession and I always have,” Podkovich said. “It’s a good way to make money and help people out.”

After all, Lopez said, the human compass, in its long direction history, seems to point towards building.

“Everything you see has been constructed by someone,” he said. “You can’t have a city without construction. You can’t have a home without it. It’s something we’ll always need to do.”

Source: Omaha World-Herald